On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Paul, Bill, and Mr. Fish got off the bus and went into the little police station. Somehow Paul was not worried. He was out of Iran, and although Turkey was not exactly a Western country, at least, he felt, it was not in the throes of a revolution. Or perhaps he was just too tired to be frightened.

He and Bill were interrogated for two hours, then released.

Six more people joined the bus at Yuksekova: a woman and a child who seemed to belong to the border guard, and four very dirty men--"Bodyguards," said Mr. Fish--who sat behind a curtain at the back of the bus.

They drove off, heading for Van, where a charter plane was waiting. Paul looked out at the scenery. It was prettier than Switzerland, he thought, but incredibly poor. Huge boulders littered the road. In the fields ragged people were treading down the snow so that their goats could get at the frozen grass beneath. There were caves with wood fences across their mouths, and it seemed that was where the people lived. They passed the ruins of a stone fortress that might have dated back to the Crusades.

The bus driver seemed to think he was in a race. He drove aggressively on the winding road, apparently confident that nothing could possibly be coming at him the other way. A group of soldiers waved him down, and he drove right past them. Mr. Fish yelled at him to stop, but he yelled back and kept going.

A few miles farther on, the army was waiting for them in force, probably having heard that the bus had run the last checkpoint. The soldiers stood in the road with their rifles raised, and the driver was forced to stop.

A sergeant jumped on the bus and dragged the driver off with a pistol at his head.

Now we're in trouble, Paul thought.

The scene was almost funny. The driver was not a bit cowed: he was yelling at the soldiers as loudly and as angrily as they were yelling at him.

Mr. Fish, Ilsman, and some of the mystery passengers got off the bus and started talking, and eventually they satisfied the military. The driver was literally thrown back onto the bus, but even that did not quench his spirit, and as he drove away he was still yelling out of the window and shaking his fist at the soldiers.

They reached Van late in the afternoon.

They went to the town hall, where they were handed over to the local police; and the scruffy bodyguards disappeared like melting snow. The police filled in forms, then escorted them to the airstrip.

As they were boarding the plane, Ilsman was stopped by a policeman: he had a .45 pistol strapped under his arm, and it seemed that even in Turkey passengers were not allowed to take firearms on board aircraft. However, Ilsman flashed his credentials yet again, and the problem went away.

Rashid was also stopped. He was carrying the fuel can with the money in it, and of course inflammable liquids were not allowed on an aircraft. He told the police the can contained suntan oil for the Americans' wives, and they believed him.

They all boarded the plane. Simons and Coburn, coming down from the effects of the stay-awake pills, both stretched out and were asleep within seconds.

As the plane taxied and took off, Paul felt as elated as if it were his first plane trip. He recalled how, in jail in Tehran, he had longed to do that most ordinary thing, get on a plane and fly away. Soaring up into the clouds now gave him a feeling he had not experienced for a long time: the feeling of freedom.

3_______

According to the peculiar rules of Turkish air travel, the charter plane could not go where a scheduled flight was available; so they could not fly directly to Istanbul where Perot was waiting, but had to change planes in Ankara.

While they were waiting for their connection, they solved a couple of problems.

Simons, Sculley, Paul, and Bill got into a taxi and asked for the American Embassy.

It was a long drive through the city. The air was brownish and had a strong smell. "The air's bad here," said Bill.

"High-sulfur coal," said Simons, who had lived in Turkey in the fifties. "They've never heard of pollution controls."

The cab pulled up at the U.S. Embassy. Bill looked out the window and his heart leaped: there stood a young, handsome marine guard in an immaculate uniform.

This was the U.S.A.

They paid off the cab.

As they went in, Simons said to the marine: "Is there a motor pool here, soldier?"

"Yes, sir," said the marine, and gave him directions.

Paul and Bill went into the passport office. In their pockets they had passport-sized photographs of themselves that Boulware had brought from the States. They went up to the desk, and Paul said: "We've lost our passports. We left Tehran in kind of a hurry."

"Oh, yes," said the clerk, as if he had been expecting them.